When Will Arch SteamOS 3.0 Support Next Gen AARCH64 Gaming PCs?

[Balderick]

https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2021/07/19/geforce-rtx-arm-gdc/

Nvidia demonstrated games running with ray tracing and dlss at GDC 2021 when announcing SDKs being made available to developers for running games on ARM using linux. The demo showed Arch aarch64 was being used

When will SteamOS support Nvidia RTX on ARM for linux devices?

[Air]

ARM is unlikely to be supported.

[Balderick]

oooh it a case of when; not if.

Why do you think that there will be no official aarch64 build of SteamOS 3.0?

Steam Deck 2.0 may very well prove to be a custom ARM device, or standalone SteamVR hmds or ...
.. AMD and their partners build custom ARM cpu/apu/soc too. https://www.amd.com/en/products/semi-custom-solutions

[XÆЯO_Vince]

Originally posted by Balderick:

oooh it a case of when; not if.

Why do you think that there will be no official aarch64 build of SteamOS 3.0?

Steam Deck 2.0 may very well prove to be a custom ARM device, or standalone SteamVR hmds or ...
.. AMD and their partners build custom ARM cpu/apu/soc too. https://www.amd.com/en/products/semi-custom-solutions

I'd be curious to know if that is a native ARM port of the game or if it's running in Wine or Proton using a special x86 to ARM translation layer.

If it's an translation layer like we see with Windows 10, that would be really cool for Linux.

[Balderick]

The blog post only mentions things like "only made possible by porting Nvidia SDKs to Linux on ARM and Linux"
https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2021/07/19/geforce-rtx-arm-gdc/

I think Lightspeed Studios, the crack team of devs at Nvidia who ported Valves Portal to android for Shield TV in 2015 and more recently added ray tracing to Quake 2 would of been involved for creating the aarch64 port of those games demonstrated at GDC - natively. But admit i am guessing.

There is no mention of any translation or compatibility layer, just "native". Must be hard for devs to keep up with everything just now. Everything seems to be evolving very fast. Guess it really dont matter to most folks until those next gen ARM laptops are in the wild.

Linus Torvalds did say "We need ARM PCs" for linux to be widely adopted not so long ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLYEleyXOtg

Now Nvidia have announced Grace ARM CPUs that use NVlink for direct connection to GPU for servers, and have custom ARM powered RTX gaming pcs.

[Balderick]

The video description for the GDC demo of pc games running natively on ARM describes some info about the Wolfenstein demo - ref Bethesda Softworks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBfci5hYN1c

Check - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethesda_Softworks#2020%E2%80%93present:_Microsoft's_acquisition_of_ZeniMax

Zenimax owns Bethesda Softworks and Microsoft bought Zenimax just earlier this year.

Which is interesting. Point is Lightspeed Studios is never mentioned so felt the need to update.

But Apple with M1 mac and MS with windows 11 on ARM are gearing up to switching to ARM. ARM PCs not phones.


Those demos would be much more interesting if we did not need to own a £700 + Nvidia RTX 3060 + GPU

But i guess cloud gaming resolves the need for ARM port and removes the need to own over priced gaming hardware to be able to enjoy pc games.


The proof of concept of enjoying pc games on aarch64 is very interesting though.

[Balderick]

Going by the info (albeit some of it speculative) in this video Valve have gaming on ARM64 covered through MoltenVK which is Vulkan on ARM64 + Proton

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tfgLV520Gk


wow, Valve are due more credit than i been giving them lately. i learned a lot about history of Valve and Vulkan because of that video and learned a lot about Valve playing key role bringing the future of gaming on ARM64 too.

[XÆЯO_Vince]

I think Linux will need a robust ARM to x86 translation layer before things can become viable. There will be tons of games that are no longer supported that wont ever get an AARCH64 rebuild. We'll need to watch how Box86, Hangover, and FEX-Emu matures.

One concern I have with ARM is the large number of SoC variants and proprietary iGPUs. Linux support for some of them is often spotty. That would explain why standard Linux distributions often don't well support ARM Chromebooks outside of Chrome OS. I'd like to see this vastly improve before considering ARM systems as well.

[Balderick]

When talking about translation layers for running x86_64 apps on ARM64 keeping an eye on Apples Rosetta 2 for their M1 Macs and MS translation layer for making x86-64 apps run on Windows 11 for ARM devices (custom Intel ARM silicon is incoming) called ARM64EC which also works for making ARM64 apps work on x86-64 hardware.

Cloud delivered content is a way to let apps run natively in the cloud and use much higher specced hardware without owning that hardware.

Chromebook would be my last choice for an ARM laptop or an ARM desktop. lol


Nvidia adding RTX 30 series GPU to ARM device and also providing RTX GPUs for cloud delivered content through their RTX Servers is an interesting combination.

I laugh at pc gaming content creators when they going on about the availability and price of gaming GPUs and how GPU manufacturers seem to have totally forgotten about low end market. Truth is cloud gaming means anybody with potato PC, tablet, phone, Chromebook, MacOS or iOS device can enjoy PC gaming through cloud gaming. Nobody needs a low end discrete GPU in 2021 as their iGPU and CPU will be enough for good cloud gaming client.

I intend using Steam Deck in docked mode for cloud gaming client as an upgrade to my Shield TV (2015 model) so that pc games can run at higher video settings and higher fps compared to natively on Steam Deck. Unless Nvidia announce Shield Laptop or desktop using RTX 30 series GPU on ARM soc before Valve take my money for Steam Deck.

[unicatte]

Originally posted by Balderick:

oooh it a case of when; not if.

No, it literally won't happen. They would need a new Linux desktop distro to base their ARM flavor on since the official Arch Linux project supports nothing but x86_64. It also needs to be somewhat compatible with the official Arch Linux project. Having used ArchLinux32 I'm aware that Arch Linux ports don't quite live up to the experience due to current lack in software support, and that's just a similar architecture in a 32-bit variant, so I suspect the unofficial ARM port will cause even more problems.

Either that or they will have to wait until Arch officially supports AArch64 and prepare a whole new system image flavor and repos.

By that point with that much work they will probably make a whole new release that will be a successor to SteamOS 3.0. And consider that Valve doesn't develop Linux operating system projects unless they're needed for hardware they intend to sell, so unless there's an AArch64 PC that Valve wants to sell it's probably not happening.

Additionally, I think it's rather naive to think that Valve already has set plans to support ARM desktop gaming when it's merely experimental technology that was showcased less than a month ago.

[Balderick]

Originally posted by unicatte:

Originally posted by Balderick:

oooh it a case of when; not if.

No, it literally won't happen.
1. They would need a new Linux desktop distro to base their ARM flavor on since the official Arch Linux project supports nothing but x86_64. It also needs to be somewhat compatible with the official Arch Linux project. Having used ArchLinux32 I'm aware that Arch Linux ports don't quite live up to the experience due to current lack in software support, and that's just a similar architecture in a 32-bit variant, so I suspect the unofficial ARM port will cause even more problems.

2. Either that or they will have to wait until Arch officially supports AArch64 and prepare a whole new system image flavor and repos.

3. By that point with that much work they will probably make a whole new release that will be a successor to SteamOS 3.0. And consider that Valve doesn't develop Linux operating system projects unless they're needed for hardware they intend to sell,
4. so unless there's an AArch64 PC that Valve wants to sell it's probably not happening.

5. Additionally, I think it's rather naive to think that Valve already has set plans to support ARM desktop gaming when it's merely experimental technology that was showcased less than a month ago.

1. Is Valves port of archlinux for SteamOS 3.0 an official archlinux port?


2. Doesnt archlinux officially support arm platform already? ref: https://archlinuxarm.org/

3 How long has SteamOS been around? c.2013 there was no windows 10, no raytracing, no custom apple ARM silicon, no ARM servers and very few subscribers to cloud gaming services that give access to full Steam library through cloud delivered content. At CES In 2013 Nvidia demonstrated the "resume play" feature for games running through GRID (aka GeForce Now) which current gen consoles and Steam Deck support. A lot has changed for gamers since 2013 and SteamOS or Steam Machines has had very little influence or use to vast majority of current Steam subscribers.

4. Yes this is my point. Valve not making custom ARM silicon for portable gaming solutions means they are not being as innovative as they could be in 2021. Intel, Apple, Nvidia, AMD and others are all moving to custom arm silicon consumer devices and arm powered servers.

5. Why do you think Nvidia demonstrated pc game running locally on ARM device running ArchLinuxARM for showing DLSS and raytracing coming to linux and ARM but NOT a x86-64 machine running archlinux??

Bonus question: Where do you think SteamOS will be in eight years from now?

[unicatte]

1. SteamOS 3.0 isn't a port. It's a fork. No point in debating whether it's an official Arch Linux system or not but it certainly does use some of the official software systems that the Arch Linux project developed. The important part is that maintaining a system that's a fork of two different distributions sounds like a logistical nightmare and it's not something that tends to happen anyways.

2. No, it doesn't. This is an unofficial project. This is why Valve would either need to drop Arch Linux (which would be bad for the x86_64 side and the thing they're not going to do since they just ditched Debian for it) or effectively base SteamOS 3.0 on two separate distributions.

3. I honestly don't understand how any of what you said in this point is in any way relevant to what I said but you only seem to be proving that it takes a long time for technology to adapt. By the time ARM desktop gaming becomes relevant and Valve adapts, SteamOS will likely be looking for a new release, if not already be past one or more.

4. The software technologies aren't ready yet and there's currently no market for ARM desktop gaming. I really hope that by pointing out "lack of their innovation in the current year" you're not implying that they should have released an AArch64 gaming system in 2021 because that would have just been yet another failed experiment of theirs that's pushed as a commercial product. Way more research needs to be done and I'm not looking forward to Valve rushing out yet another experimental product like the old Steam Machines.

5. I think this is an absurd question. It's because Nvidia is researching ARM desktop gaming. I don't know what kind of answer you're expecting. Though I think you're misunderstanding something. This showcase doesn't intend to use ARM to showcase Linux technology. It intends to use Linux to showcase ARM technology. x86_64 is completely irrelevant to this.

Bonus answer: I feel like you must have no sense of time to be asking this kind of question if you're expecting a serious, educated response. It might be a flop, it might be a success, it might revolutionize Linux desktop among the masses. Or maybe Valve ends up deciding that Windows is a better fit for their hardware. Maybe Valve will never have released another PC since then. Any kind of answer you could get to this is an extremely bold prediction.